Pusha T Talks New Release Darkest Before Dawn and Disrupting the Rap Landscape

On the current state of hip-hop: “It's all feeling and vibe, no content. Everything is really… groovy.”

Pusha T leans in to correct me when I refer to his latest project, King Push - Darkest Before Dawn: The Prelude, as "a mixtape." He doesn’t say I’m wrong, exactly, but he dislikes the word choice. "I don’t want to cheapen it like that," he says, emphatic and careful. He’s an unnervingly watchful presence, even on mundane points; it often feels like he’s parsing my words as closely as his own.

With his last solo album, 2013’s My Name Is My Name, the man born Terrence Thornton reaffirmed that the haughty take on coke-rap he perfected with his brother in Clipse is an evergreen sound, one that can survive shifts in production trends and hip-hop guard changes. Now he’s back with a flurry of activity: Two new projects, this week’s Darkest Before the Dawn and spring’s King Push. He has also been appointed president of Kanye’s Def Jam imprint G.O.O.D. Music, stirring fond memories of when another ruthless MC, Scarface, was put in charge of Def Jam South in the late 1990s.

At this point, the Virginia veteran has been riding the vanishing edge between underground king and commercial force for over a decade. He’s a self-conscious symbol of hardcore street rap who rubs shoulders easily with Diddy and performs with EDM artists; the not-mixtape features of-the-moment artists like Kehlani and A$AP Rocky alongside been-there heavies like Beanie Sigel. On one new track, "Got Em Covered", he sneers: "Whichever rapper hot for the moment/ Don’t realize he’s a candle 'til he blow it." Pusha’s strange mix of disdain and engagement seems to fuel the humming engine of his mind that I swear I can hear even in a cramped, airless conference room.

Pitchfork: You keep yourself apart from the fray, and it feels strategic. Like on your new single "Untouchable", you say: "I drops every blue moon/ To separate myself from you kings of the YouTube." When you look around rap right now, do you see anyone echoing your style?

Pusha T: Honestly, I don't believe anybody is doing lyric-driven, dark hip-hop, at least while sounding current. A lot of lyrical MCs are stuck in time: They haven't figured out how to keep those writing intricacies while picking up the proper sound to give them that current swing. "Untouchable" has that feeling; it’s just different. It’s a foreign landscape.

Pitchfork: With Darkest Before Dawn and King Push, you’re due to put out two full-length projects in the next six months. How did you decide on that release strategy?

PT: It became two records because I had been really working that much. When I was putting the records together, it was turning into a rollercoaster ride of an album, and I didn't like that. I wanted to get this specific aesthetic: linear, cold, and dark. So I took the 10 joints that I loved in that vein and put that in Darkest Before Dawn, which is the prelude to King Push.

I worked with the best producers and made them go to the darkest parts of their soul. Kanye, Sean Combs, Timbaland: No producer could do something lighthearted. I mean, if I was going to do Timbaland joints, it was going to be the Jay Z B-sides Timbaland. I feel like the only way for me to cause a disruption right at this moment is to do something that is the polar opposite of what everyone else is doing.

Pitchfork: What do you think is missing from the rap landscape right now?

PT: It's all feeling and vibe, no content. There are exceptions—Kendrick, of course. That was a concept. And Future. But other than that, everything is really… groovy. Across the board.

Pitchfork: There’s a long-running theme of financial independence from the rap industry in your lyrics, and on Darkest Before Dawn you have a song called "M.F.T.R."—"More Famous Than Rich".

PT: I just feel like, in today's times, that's what people are. And people bask in being more famous than rich, but they never tell you that's true. Then you find out they've been basking in this reflected glory. "M.F.T.R." is about not succumbing to that. I’m just totally against that whole notion. I am still speaking from a place of my upbringing and what my street principles are. There was no faking there. You can’t really fake about that lifestyle, but people are doing that so much now.

PT: It’s sad. In regards to the business, I look at 50 like a hero. I do.

Pitchfork: Was some of that mindset reinforced during the time you were fighting labels contracts with Clipse in the mid-2000s?

PT: 100 percent. We never had the luxury of relying on fame. I’ve always had some level of having to be independent outside of music, because the music wasn’t a smooth ride. We lost a lot in the mix: Everybody that I came in the music game with—friends I brought in with me—are all doing 10-34 years in jail. That’s why if you want to get the real, you gotta get it from me. I don’t think you can really get it anywhere else, not regarding street shit. I don’t feel like people give you that level of reality.

Embedded content is unavailable.

Pitchfork: A lot of people are talking about politics and rap now, with headlines like: "Rap Is Political Again." Do you ever feel like you got an unfair rep for being called "apolitical" or even "amoral" because you were categorized as "coke-rap"?

PT: I have definitely gotten a bad rep. I’ve been categorized, pigeonholed. I mean, coke-rap was created off of us, but people made that genre, not us; you’re just surface-level listening to me if you just gonna call me coke-rap. I’ve always spoken on all types of levels. Even to this day: "In Mexico, fuck Donald and his pledge." To me, that’s not about politics; rap has just always been about what’s going on in society. People want to call it political, but that’s not what Grandmaster Flash’s "The Message" was. That was just what we know as rap.